There are people who take these lists of the best in the world seriously: records, books, wines, restaurants, whatever.
I know that the 50 Best, released this week, is a ranking of restaurants prepared with method and criteria. This does not eliminate biases. In the meantime, a body of editors decides for you what’s good and what’s not.
Whenever this list comes out, I keep thinking that somewhere there’s a rich jerk ordering an underling to make reservations at as many well-placed restaurants as possible. It doesn’t matter if they stay in Copenhagen, Lima or the Spanish Basque Country.
There’s something I don’t like: gastronomic tourism, defined as a trip in which meals in specific places are the objective, not stopovers along the way.
Nor do I put hunger and inequality on the scale. Let’s pretend that every citizen is able to take a plane for the purpose of having dinner in Cape Town.
It’s the kind of thing I happily do on a business trip, but there are two important points here.
First, this is my job — and it’s not on the world’s worst list. Second: someone else takes care of organizing the agenda. I just get in the van, get out of the van, eat, drink, have a few laughs with the group and get out without paying the bill to get back in the van.
Vacations are another thing. I want distance from a day full of commitments. I’ve tried to adapt, and it sucks.
When I went to Lima, I wanted to visit, let me see here, the second best restaurant in the world. I made the reservation on the internet weeks before leaving São Paulo. Exactly like an Instagramist foodie would do.
We both arrived and were led to a table in a corner near the cellar, more than ten meters from the nearest human being. Sepulchral silence. Light so low you could barely read the wine list. I pointed out to the waiter the second least expensive on the list, as usual.
As far as food is concerned, it was supposed to be a tasting menu.
The food was excellent, but it’s going to compete with the obvious anticipation nurtured by anticipation.
It’s not a program for me. I’m the boring one. The boring guy who finds it boring to spend hours in the dark, muttering, while the service interrupts his conversation 700 times to change plates, fill the glass or clean up crumbs.
I like to choose a few places to go in advance or, if I’m having too much fun with something else, give up going. No reservations. Have I already run into the door? Several times, but what comes after is a good story to tell.
The pleasure of this borer, when he travels, is to get lost and find himself in a lost corner. Like the creekside restaurant in the less-visited province of Galicia, in the (sort of) remote northwest Spain. Pork ribs with fries, included in the menu a liter of water or wine in a generic green glass bottle.
When closing the account, the owner did not shy away from asking: “Why did you leave Brazil to come to this end of the world?”. That’s what boring people like, not tasting menus at the best restaurant in the world.
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